National Semi, TriMedia team on Geode

National Semiconductor on Tuesday announced an alliance with TriMedia Technologies. to bring greater multimedia capabilities to National's x86 Geode processor.

National will license the TriMedia TM32A embedded media processor core for use in all Geode products, said Mike Polacek, vice president of National's Information Appliance Group, during a news conference at Comdex Chicago. In addition, National has acquired a "substantial" equity stake in TriMedia Technologies, a former unit within Philips Semiconductors NV. Officials from both companies did not disclose any financial details of the alliance.

TriMedia's 32-bit VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word) processor and software technology will be used in National's Information Appliance Group and be applied to the personal access device (PAD), set-top box and thin-client markets, Polacek said.

TriMedia's technology will allow for multimedia coding and decoding for formats like MPEG-4, Polacek said. The Trimedia hardware core will assist the Geode processor with addressing video, audio, graphics and communications processing. It also assists the processor with addressing processing spikes from multimedia applications. Initially, the TriMedia core and the Geode processor will be separate, but later will be placed on the Geode processor.

National Semiconductor, in Santa Clara, California, can be reached at +1-408-721-5000 or at http://www.national.com/. TriMedia Technologies, in Milpitas, California, can be reached at +1-408-922-4500 or on the Web at http://www.trimediatechnologies.com/.

Copyright 2019 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of IDG Communications is prohibited.